


Mechanical Bull

by E_J_Frost



Series: Mechanical Bull [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, BDSM, Dom/sub, Double Penetration, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Past Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-26
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2018-12-20 03:07:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11911935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/E_J_Frost/pseuds/E_J_Frost
Summary: This story contains references to a non-consensual branding. Please do not read if this disturbs you.





	Mechanical Bull

**Author's Note:**

> This story contains references to a non-consensual branding. Please do not read if this disturbs you.

I shrug out of my POS suit and check it at the door. There’s a line into the club. There always is on a Saturday night. I know better than to come on a weekend. Saturdays are for amateurs, poseurs, pretenders and I’m none of those. But I’m not here tonight by choice.

I take the suit-check ticket from the ‘bot on the cloakroom and wait my turn. Finally, the bouncer, a huge old piece of mech with a stringy pink wig perched on one hinged shoulder like an epaulette, nods me through. Pink knows me. I’m on his “regular” list from two years ago, when I really used to be a regular. Before I gave up the club scene. Before the hurt and the anger and the scars that won’t ever fade. Before all the bad stuff that I’m here tonight to forget.

I just need a good fuck.

A nice fuck. A satisfying fuck. Not the tepid screwing I get off my Orgasmatron 9000 or the occasional one-nighters I’ve picked up in straight clubs. A good fuck. A real fuck.

I make my way to the end of the bar. It’s packed, three or four deep all along its ten-meter length. But the crush at the far end is thinner. That end is right up against the glowing, pulsing wall of amps that are pumping out something off the youbie charts. It’s barely music. But the dance floor pulses with bodies, pressed tight together, arms up over their heads, grinding to the beat. So I guess the atonality doesn’t bother anyone but me.

I turn my back on it and slide between some elbows into a slot at the bar.

I spot the reason I’m here immediately. He’s a third of the way down the bar, rapidly popping tops on beer bottles and tabs on bulbs of more exotic mixed drinks and passing them out to a waiting sea of hands. Sweat already slicks him, glistening on his shaved head, running down his thick neck, beading on the corded muscles of his arms. It makes wet ebony semi-circles on his trademark black t-shirt. As he turns to hand out more bottles, the white legend on the back of the shirt comes into view.

_Ride the Mechanical Bull_

_at the Barzarre._

_Mind the horns, baby._

I’ve read the logo a hundred times, pressed against this bar. While Jere and Viv, or Adie or Marcus before them, held my chain and let me sip from their drinks and watched me dance for them. But I never thought about it. Never wondered what it meant, until four days ago when I bumped into another club regular in a realspace arcade and we got to talking about the tiny piece of common ground we share.

_Ride the Mechanical Bull. Mind the horns._

I gave the regular that tipped me off a ride back at his place. It was supposed to be a ‘thank you’ fuck. It didn’t really work out that way.

My gut tightens and turns over at the memory. His disgust at what I wanted. Him bolting from the bed immediately afterwards to wash his hand. Me gathering up my clothes and POS suit and putting them on over my sweaty, lube-smeared skin and getting the hell out of there before he emerged from the bathroom. Walking all the way to the tube station, aching, unfinished, unsatisfied, the press of my clothes and suit enhancing the feeling in a way that should have been sexy but just left me hurting.

Looking at Bull, watching him move, the sweat run down his skin, makes me hurt the same way. I want more. Need more. I always have. Why is it so hard to find?

He’s ignored me since I first came back, four nights ago. Not a nod. Not a wink. Certainly not a beer. I’ve never been as sober at a club as I’ve been here the last four nights.

Tonight’s no different. I stand in his section of the bar, but he stays as far away as he can. The angry muttering of the clubbers around me rises even over the music. Most of them move down the bar, closer to Bull, where they have a chance of getting served. I remain resolutely in my spot. Waiting. Leaning nonchalantly against the bar like I’ve got all the time in the world.

But I don’t. I’ve called in sick for four days so I could stay out all night at the club. Even at my worst with Jere and Viv, I’ve never taken so much time off to feed my kink. I’m more than a little worried there’ll be a ‘find a new job, fuck you very much’ vmail waiting for me when I get back on Monday. Another thing I’m trying not to think about while I lean against the bar and wonder what it will take to get Bull to look at me.

But the worry continues to gnaw at the back of my mind. I need my job. My good job that buys me nice perks like my flat that overlooks the river. My straight job that keeps me sane, keeps me from submerging, drowning in the world of kinky sex that dominates my nights.

Right now, though, I’m drowning in that need. I need it so badly I can feel the hot, wet, aching press of my labia against the seam of my jeans. I rock back and forth, rubbing slightly, and grimace at the mingled pleasure and pain that shoots up into my belly.

When I look up, I realize two things. One, I’m not alone at the end of the bar anymore. And, two, Bull may be avoiding me, but he’s not ignoring me.

A man and a woman are rubbing elbows with me. They’re not shouting for drinks, or waiving their arms, or moving to the beat. They’re looking at me. The woman’s eyes are geneered to look like cat’s eyes, and she blinks them at me lazily. Feline-ly.

I shiver. I’ve never been much of a cat person.

She wets lacquered red lips with a tongue that’s been pierced so many times it looks like a zipper. “I remember you,” she shouts, loud enough to be heard over the pounding beat. “You used to be with Jere and his Mistress. Hon, what was her name?”

 _Vivienne_. Her name sticks in my throat like a clot of ashes. Old conditioning. Whipped and burned and incised into me. I wasn’t supposed to call her anything other than “my beloved Mistress.”

The man on the other side of me answers her in a grunt, “Darleen or something.”

I want to correct him, but my throat is too dry to speak.

The woman wets her lips again. Her cat-green eyes flick over me, taking in the black leather vest, the black-market jeans, the spike-heeled boots, vestiges of the life I haven’t quite been able to leave behind.

“You’re out without your Master tonight, you naughty pet,” she says in only half-a-shout, so I have to strain to hear her. When I realize what she’s saying, I wish I couldn’t. “Are you looking for something different?”

I shake my head helplessly, frozen. But a tear slips down my cheek. This isn’t what I want. They’re not why I’m here. Their kind are the reason I gave up the clubs after I left Jere and Vivienne. I can feel the cruelty washing off the woman in waves. I don’t have to look at her hands to know that she’ll have claws. I don’t have to see her bedroom to know that the walls will be decorated with cat-o-nine-tails, nipple clamps, branding irons, magnecuffs. And I don’t have to go to bed with her to know what she’ll want from her bottom.

I’ve never liked pain. It was never what I wanted. But it was always what I got.

The woman’s hand slides under my chin, lifting my face so she can look into my eyes. Her curved nails prickle the underside of my chin, tiny points digging in.

“I remember your name,” she says, looking into my eyes. Her slitted pupils expand with excitement until there’s just a glittering green band ringing each velvet black hole. “Kerey, isn’t it?”

My club name. Different from my work name. Different again from my birth name, which I haven’t used in so long I barely remember it.

“I remember how you used to dance, Kerey,” the woman continues, and if it was quieter, I know she’d be purring. The music makes her shout, ruins her bedroom voice. “Would you dance for us, Kerey?”

I hate her repetitive use of my name. And she can feel me cringe each time she says it. Her pale tongue licks out to touch her lips again. My eyes follow it helplessly, the way a bird watches a snake.

The man gives me a small push towards the dance floor. “Dance for us,” he grunts. “Mad, where’s your chain?”

The woman reaches into her bag. I don’t need to see what she pulls out. I know what it will be. A black ribbon attached to a thin metal chain. For collaring a pet. I have scars across my back from where Vivienne used to whip me with her chain, towards the end.

I shiver violently. I don’t want to wear a collar again. And I don’t want to dance for them. I don’t want their attention. This isn’t what I came for.

But standing back from the bar, hesitating between the bar and the dance floor, I see that this unwanted attention, and the small commotion of the man shoving me into the crowd, has gotten me the attention I wanted.

Bull watches me from behind the bar, dark eyes glittering. He keeps passing out drinks to the reaching hands, holding out the cred reader tethered to his waist for the press of thumbs. But his eyes flick to me constantly, stop there for a second like they’re stuck, and then flick back over the crowd.

I dance for him.

There’s barely any space to dance, even in the neutral zone between the bar and dance floor. Other clubbers move around me constantly, like the tide. But this kind of dancing doesn’t take much space. It’s all in the belly and hips. Shaking and rolling. Bumping and grinding. I lift my arms up over my head to avoid elbowing anyone, knowing it will lift my breasts. The club’s hot with the press of bodies. Dancing makes me hotter. I shake my hair out of its coil and let it cascade down my back to my waist, a long, white-blonde, silken sheet.

A small space opens up around me. Bull and the dom couple aren’t the only ones watching me now. I used to be a good dancer. My body remembers, even if my mind keeps shying away from the moves and the memories they evoke.

I keep my eyes on Bull as I dance. He’s frowning thunderously; his eyes flick away from me less and less until he’s following each move, each gyration.

I don’t see Cat-woman move. I only see Bull’s eyes flicker as she interrupts his line of sight.

She holds out the black ribbon, not really a ribbon at all but a strip of polymemetic carbon that can be programmed any way the Master wants. To identify the pet. To communicate with the pet. Even to punish the pet.

I keep dancing for a moment, watching Bull, hoping.

He watches me, but doesn’t abandon his routine of drinks and credits. He doesn’t move from behind the bar; doesn’t shout anything over the pounding cacophony.

Cat-woman slaps the coiled chain against her leather-covered thigh. Impatient. Bad pet, making the Mistress wait. She’ll punish me later for this.

This isn’t what I want. It’s not why I’m here. I left all this behind a year ago. I can’t do it again.

I shake my head at her and move another step onto the dance floor, out of the neutral zone, into the anonymous press of bodies. The woman frowns. Beside her, her partner-in-leather takes a step forward, as though he’s going to grab me.

A hand closes on my upper arm. Hard. Pulls me away from Cat-woman’s partner. Manoeuvres me around a heavily-muscled arm, a black-shirted back. I stare at the words that brought me back here.

_Ride the Mechanical Bull. Mind the horns, baby._

Give me the horns. Both of them. Please, God, give me those horns.

“Was that a _no_ , Kerey?” he asks.

I stretch up on my toes so I can shout in his ear. “Yes, it was a no.”

“You heard her,” Bull growls at Cat-woman and her partner. “Barzarre is consent-only. Find yourself another friend or find yourself another club.”

Cat-woman pouts, a carmine moue. “Don’t spoil our fun, darling.” Her feline eyes rove Bull. “If you want your big friend to join us, he’s welcome. I’m sure we could find some use for his . . . talents.”

Bull laughs, deep and harsh, throwing back his head, showing white teeth. “Plenty of talent here to choose from. I’m only Freak Number 1.” He points at the small logo emblazoned in white over his left breast. “Enjoy the rest of your night.”

His firm grip propels me through the crowd, away from Cat-woman and her partner, into a small space on the other side of the amp wall where there’s door, painted black, invisible against the black wall. He reaches around me, thumbs open the magnelock, and pushes me inside.

The door snicks closed behind him; the noise-level drops several hundred decibels.

He releases me with a small shove, so I stumble into the middle of the room. It’s clearly an office: crowded with desk and chair and filing cabinets. The room is dimly lit, the only light coming from a small, antique electric lamp that casts a green glow over a cluttered desk. After the darkness of the club, it seems bright.

Bull leans against the closed door, arms crossed over his huge chest, watching me. The desk lamp paints olive shadows in the hollows of his cheeks, along the line of his collarbone. A pinpoint of green illuminates each pupil. How can eyes that are such a warm brown be so cold?

“What’re you doin’ here, Kerey?”

I twist my hands together behind my back. Feeling guilty. Feeling like a kid caught misbehaving at V-school. “I used to come here a lot. I thought I was welcome.”

“That was, what, eighteen months ago? Haven’t seen you since that maroon bitch got her chain on you.”

Vivienne. Vivienne and her thing for maroon. Maroon-streaked hair. Maroon nails. Maroon stilettos. Maroon retrogenned nipples.

“Did you miss me?” I ask, trying for light. A hint of cheek. Sweet Kerey. Funny Kerey. It comes out desperate instead.

He shrugs one massive shoulder. “You never gave me the time of day. Why would I miss you?”

But I did. I always noticed him. Always smiled and flirted with him. Respectfully, submissively. The way a good pet is supposed to behave towards her Master’s host. But it wasn’t just show with Bull. There was always an undercurrent of real heat, at least for me, even before I knew what he could do for me.

I spread my hands. “I thought maybe you noticed me once or twice.”

He shrugs again. “What if I did? That was a fuck of a long time ago. What’s brought you back? You trawling for a new Master?”

I shake my head firmly. “I’m done with that.”

The harsh laugh again. “Then you’ve come to the wrong fuckin’ place.”

I cringe. Having that laugh directed at me is much less fun than having it directed at Cat-woman.

“I meant with being a pet. I’m done being a pet.”

Another shrug. “That’ll be real disappointing news in some quarters. Jere stops in occasionally. Asks about you. You want me to mention that next time I see him?” Bull’s full lips twist into a grin as cruel as his laugh.

I shake my head. Jere knows exactly the situation between us. I made sure the restraining order was served on him in person, at work, where he couldn’t wriggle out of it.

Bull’s silent, watching me, and the silence strains, stretches. I feel the need to fill it.

“I’m not here for Jere . . . or another Master. I thought, I thought you might have figured out why I’m here. Why I’ve been here the last couple of nights.”

He lifts one dark eyebrow. “Maybe you’d better spell it out for me.”

Spelling it out has always been hard for me. I’m not good at talking about what I need. Even when I’m sure my partner’s not going to run to the bathroom in disgust.

“I came back because I heard about . . .” I gesture towards his groin, the prominent bulge tightly defined by his leather pants. “I mean, I finally figured it out.”

Bull snorts, shifts against the door. “Took you long enough.”

Humiliation flushes me. “How was I supposed to know?”

He takes two steps forward, and he’s right up against me, looking down at me with those dark eyes that should be warm but are as cold and black as a winter night. “All you had to do was ask.”

Once I would have cowered, begged forgiveness, licked his boots, his dick, whatever he offered. Too many whippings, too much pain, taught me what cowering gets me. I flare at him instead. “When? When Viv was yanking my chain?”

He shrugs again. “You asked for that. I remember when you first showed up. Everyone wanted a piece of you. You coulda taken your pick.”

That’s not what I remember. My first foray into the dark world of dominance and submission was right here, in this club. I remember walking through the door so green that I wore a classic French maid outfit – frilly white apron and all – thinking that S-and-M was nothing more than sex in fancy dress. I didn’t know anything. Not even the basic rules. All I knew was that I needed _more_. And the eyes that met mine, the faces that greeted me – including Bull’s – were so cool and superior and arrogant and _knowing_. So I did what I do best. I hid my ignorance and batted my big eyes and cowered and simpered and learned as fast as I could about being a bottom and discovered a world of forbidden sex that finally, finally got me off where my enthusiastic but oh-so-straight lovers hadn’t even brought me close.

But there was a price. Such a high price. If I’d only known what was right in front of me, right across the bar, the whole time. I give voice to that thought. “I wish I’d picked you,” I say.

Bull blinks; his face goes stony. Then he laughs. “What, you got tired of the sub-dom thing and figured you’d move on to freaks?”

 _Freak Number 1_. It’s written right across his chest. That’s what he thinks of himself.

I think he’s a gift from God.

“Who’s the freak?” I ask. “You, or the girl who can’t get off unless she’s getting it front and behind?”

Bull blinks again and takes a step back. He leans against the door. His arms go back up across his chest, muscles clenching until his t-shirt strains across his pectorals. “Why’re you here, Kerey?” he asks slowly.

“Because of you,” I say bluntly, tired of whatever game he’s playing. “And you know it, or you wouldn’t have been avoiding me for the last four nights.”

He turns his head to the side slightly, avoiding my gaze. “I don’t take pets,” he says, his deep voice rough. “Too much hassle.”

“I told you, I’m done with being a pet.”

“I don’t . . .” He pauses, shakes his head. “Whatever you’re lookin’ for, I ain’t the one to give it to you.”

I draw one step closer to him, so that my breasts are a whisper away from his crossed arms. “You’re the _only_ one to give it to me.”

He shakes his head again, but doesn’t move, doesn’t step away.

Once I would have begged. If he’d touch me, give me the promise of fulfilment, I still might. For now, I move fractionally closer, until my thighs brush his, a kiss of denim on leather. I feel that tiny touch all the way through me. An electric tingle. It brings my nipples to aching hardness, anticipation a more powerful aphrodisiac than any drug. “Bull,” I say softly.

He runs a hand over his scalp, still not looking at me. I have an overwhelming urge to follow the path of his hand with my fingertips, my tongue. He’s shaved his head down so there’s just a dark shadow of hair, and I’m desperate to know what that gleaming scalp, that fuzz of hair, feels like against my skin.

“I gotta get back to work,” he says, each word slightly disjointed, like he’s having trouble remembering them.

“Bull,” I repeat, more loudly, voicing a little of my frustration.

He turns, somehow without even brushing me. In one of those fluid motions of his that I’ve always noticed and admired. The door snicks open. In the shadows, between the green gloom of the office and the strobing darkness of the club, he pauses, looks back over his shoulder. A liquid gleam of eyes; a flash of white teeth.

“Stick around, Ker. Have a drink. On the house. You never know what might turn up.”

I don’t care what turns up. What I’m looking for is right in front of me. “Bull,” I say a third time, almost pleading.

He shakes his head and strides into the club.

I hesitate for a moment, watching his ass, the smooth play of muscle under his leather pants. He’s turned me down. I want that ass so badly, to grip its firm roundness in my hands while he fucks me. But he doesn’t want me. Embarrassment, hot and biting, washes through me. Turns my arousal as bitter as acid.

The door beeps at me. My feet move automatically, propelling me out of the small office, around the end of the heaving bar, towards the cloakroom and the door.

“ _Kerey_.” My name. Not shouted, but in a bass growl that carries over the music.

I turn. Bull’s standing at the end of the bar I’ve haunted for the last four nights. An uncapped Corona sits in a small cleared space on the bartop. A wedge of real lime perches in the bottle’s neck. Exactly the way I like it.

“On the house.” Another growl. Then he’s returning to his endless round of drinks and credits.

A pity drink. I’ve had a pity fuck – from Adie, just after she dumped me – but never a pity drink. It stiffens my backbone, heats my cheeks with anger. I stride to the bar, shove the lime down into the beer and chug it, throwing my head back, swallowing so fast that all I taste is fizz.

When I slam the empty bottle back on the bar, the circle of clubbers around me erupts in cheers and wolf-whistles. Bull pauses, swipes my empty off the bar between two knuckles.

“You swallow like a pro,” he says, not loud enough for me to actually hear him over the music, but I can read the words on his lips. His eyes have narrowed with anger, and, maybe, a little lust.

“That’s just one of my many talents,” I snap back at him.

“You go, girl!” Coos a woman in yellow spray-on next to me. I ignore her and continue my staring contest with Bull.

He breaks eye-contact first. He closes his eyes for a second while he pulls his shirt off over his head.

He tosses the shirt to me, and I catch it with nerveless fingers, out of reflex. Stunned. I’ve never seen Bull take off his shirt before. It takes my breath away. The shirt just hinted at the perfection underneath: rippling, chiselled muscle wrapped in caramel-velvet skin. His pecs are so cut, the strobes cast shadows under them. He looks edible, and my mouth actually waters as I stare at him.

He grabs another round of drinks and begins passing them out. Without breaking his rhythm, he nods at me. “Hold on to that. I want it back later.”

Later? There’s going to be a _later_?

Excitement, hot and so sharp my knees almost buckle, flashes through me. Before I can think about it, my fingers are working the leather-covered buttons of my vest. I slip it off, fold it with exaggerated care, knowing that Bull and everyone else around me is watching, and place it on the bartop.

“Sure,” I shout. “If you don’t mind keeping that behind the bar for me.”

I feel the eyes on my breasts, more revealed than concealed under a sheer black bra. But Bull’s eyes don’t drop. He continues to look into my eyes, and now I’m sure there’s lust there alongside the anger.

“No problem.” Somewhere in the next round of drinks and credits, my vest disappears behind the bar.

Bull continues to watch me, but the moment’s over. He’s made it clear that he wants me to stay, but whatever’s going to happen will be on his terms. The usual rules don’t apply. I’m back to where I started my first night in this club. Not knowing what I’m doing. Not knowing the rules. And half-naked.

I take a few steps away from the bar, into the press of bodies on the dance floor. I don’t want any more to drink. Bull’s working, so whatever’s going to happen will have to wait until closing time. There’s no point in staying at the bar, where I could attract more unwanted attention. And I know Bull will watch me no matter where I am.

On the dance floor, the fact that I’m half-naked counts for less. A lot of the clubbers – men and women – gyrating away are barely dressed. As I begin moving to the beat, I press Bull’s shirt against my face. It’s damp, still warm from the heat of his body. It holds his smell: sweat and skin and a faint spicy maleness. Delicious. I drink it in. Stretching my arms up, I wriggle the shirt down over my body. It envelops me in his heat and scent. It’s huge on me, hanging down almost to my knees. I hug it to me and dance that way, with my arms crossed over my chest, clutching the shirt, my hips moving in time to the music.

A small space opens around me, cleared by people avoiding my swinging hair and Bull’s steady regard. Whether they found a new bottom or a new venue, Cat-woman and her partner don’t reappear. A few clubbers enter the empty circle and try to dance with me. When I ignore them, and when they follow my eyes to the bar and catch Bull’s glower, they melt back into the crowd.

I dance until closing, fuelled by the slight buzz from the beer – I always have been a cheap drunk – and the electric heat of Bull’s gaze. The lights come on and the music finally, mercifully, stops. Both fatigued and enflamed by the dancing, I walk slowly towards the bar and lean against it.

“Would you like your shirt back now?” I ask, my voice husky.

Bull glances up from racking glasses. “Gimme a minute.”

I give him five, and another after he slides a glass of water across the bar at me. When I put the empty glass back on the bar, he takes it, and I look around and realize that the bar is clean, tidy and deserted. Even Pink has called it a night, settling into his dock by the door, his green eyeglow dimmed.

Bull leans on the other side of the bar. “I’ll take my shirt now,” he says, slow and very, very sexy.

I catch the bottom of the shirt with one finger and drag it up my stomach, between my breasts, and off over my head. I toss it to him and he catches it. This time his eyes are on my breasts. I let him look at me, feeling my nipples tighten under his hot gaze. Sparks of electricity run down into my belly, pool there like the beginning of an orgasm. It’s everything I can do not to wiggle my hips. But I don’t think Bull would like that. He’s so restrained, so in control. I think he’d want his bottom to be, too.

I wait for him to toss me my vest, but he doesn’t. He loops both his shirt and my vest over his arm and flips open the hinged end of the bartop. “My place or yours?” he asks, without smiling at the cliché.

“Mine’s down by the river.”

He moves through the gap and flips the bartop back down behind him, a smooth economy of movement. God, I love the way he moves. He stops, standing so close to where I’m leaning against the bar that I can feel the heat off his body.

“By the river, huh? Long way to come to go slumming.”

I hold his dark eyes, still lit by anger, but also by lust. “A long way to come to find what I need,” I correct him.

He acknowledges my riposte with a slight nod. “My place is closer.”

He leads the way, shifting our clothes to his other arm so he can put his left hand in the small of my back. It’s not an intimate touch, but my need magnifies it until that large, warm hand could be cupped over my groin, it feels so good.

His place turns out to be upstairs, through another hidden door in the wall of the club, up in a lift so old Bull uses a lever to operate it. The lift spills us out into a huge space, lit only by windows high in the walls that let in the diffuse moonlight, shining through clouds that hold tomorrow’s acid rain.

His place looks more like a gym than a home. A few pieces of furniture are stranded amongst the racks of free-weights, anti-grav machines, treadmills and ellipticals. The bed, couch, dining table, and kitchen appliances look like afterthoughts, concessions to the requirements of sleeping and eating, appendages to the main function of the person who lives here.

“No wonder you’re so big,” I say, looking around.

He chuckles and leads me through the maze of equipment towards the bed. I glance around, expecting to see the sorts of things I’m used to in a Master’s bedroom. Manacles, chains, whips, paddles. There’s nothing. A few plastic crates, holding folded clothes, stacked against the wall. A square table next to the bed. An empty glass and a holocube showing the time and a weather channel sitting on the table’s wooden top. The table has a drawer that might hold his secrets. But it’s an awfully small drawer. I doubt he could even fit one whip in there.

He tosses our clothes on top of the crates and stands looking at me. An awkward silence stretches. I want him to tell me what to do. What’s expected. What the rules are. So I don’t make any mistakes; so I know how to avoid the punishment I’ve never really liked but endured to get to the sex I want. But I’ve never been good at asking, and I can’t find the words I need now.

“You want something to eat? Drink? I’ve got some beer in the fridge.” He nods toward the cluster of kitchen appliances on the other side of several weight benches.

I shake my head. “Bull, I, uhm—”

“Yeah?” He waits, his head tilted to the side, watching me, and I realize I shouldn’t have started, because now there’s nothing to do but finish.

Flushing with embarrassment, I continue, “I just wondered what you expect from me.”

He grins suddenly, wickedly. “I expect you to scream my name when you come.”

“Oh.” The embarrassment turns to heat. My nipples and groin prickle.

“C’mere, Kerey.” He holds out a hand. “I’ve wanted to see what you got in your pants for years.”

Nothing half as interesting as what’s in _his_ pants. But I cross to him and when I reach him, unbutton my jeans and wriggle out of them. He sucks his lower lip into his mouth as he watches me. I turn slightly to give him the long line of my hip and thigh, and to hide what’s on my right hip, as I push the jeans off over my boots. His breathing, audible in the silent, echoing space, deepens.

I expect him to tell me to keep the boots on. Every Master I’ve had has fucked me in these boots at some time or other. But Bull says, gruffly, “Boots off.”

I open the boots’ seals with my thumbs and kick them off. Without the stiletto heels, I’m a good quarter meter shorter than Bull. His height, his strength, hit me and I feel my pulse pound in my throat.

“Get on the bed,” he growls.

I back away until the bed hits me in the butt. It’s so high I have to scramble up onto it. I kneel on the rumpled sheets and watch him move towards me. The powerful muscles of his stomach and chest contract as he walks. It’s like watching a vid of one of the extinct great cats – a lion or a panther – all coiling muscle under velvet fur.

He stops at the edge of the bed. One hand plays along the waistband of his pants. I follow the movement with my eyes, hypnotized.

“Bull,” I breathe.

“What d’you think’s under here, Kerey?” he asks. His voice is soft, almost playful.

“Uhm, I’ve heard you have, uh, two, you know—” I stammer. I’m no good at saying dirty words out loud. Thinking them is one thing. Saying them is another. Viv tried to break me of my inhibitions, but despite the scar on my hip that I’ll carry to my grave, I still can’t say ‘dick’ or ‘cock’ aloud.

Bull doesn’t say them, either. “Yeah, you heard right.” He opens the fly of his leather pants and slowly peels them down his hips.

I rise up onto my knees in awe. Two thick, purple cocks hang from the nest of black curls at his groin. Either one of them would be enough to fire my blood. There’s something so exciting about the sight of a man’s aroused penis. The taut, silken skin over firm muscle, the heavy ropes of veins, and the red plum at the tip. Like some sweet treat just begging to be eaten. An ache begins deep inside me, an ache that only the thrust of all that hard, hot flesh will satisfy.

And two! My mind reels. And both so perfect. I expected one to be small, a afterthought. But it’s not. His second dick is just as big and beautiful as the first one. The ache between my legs grows so strong I feel faint.

“You want me to wear somethin’?” he asks.

I look at him blankly. Does he want to leave _his_ boots on?

“I think I got some in the drawer.” He nods at the small dressing table.

Nonplussed, I scoot over to the dresser and tug open the drawer. No whip. Just the normal detritus of life. Crumpled pieces of flimsy, an IDentacard so old the holo has gone fuzzy and dim, ticket stubs, scattered business cards. Among the bits and pieces, a foil strip with a nude woman, her head thrown back in ecstasy, stamped on each packet.

I lift out the condoms. I haven’t seen one in years. Haven’t used one, either. Not since Hep-V was eradicated.

“These?” I ask, puzzled.

“Yeah.”

“No, I uh—” I start to protest, but then think better of it. The condoms proudly proclaim their lubricating qualities, and despite how aroused I am, I always appreciate that during anal sex.

I tear off one packet, open it and pull out the slippery circle. Moving back along the edge of the bed towards him, I hold it out.

He gives me a slightly twisted smile. “You’ll need two.”

I shake my head. “Just one’s fine.”

He looks at me, a slight frown wrinkling his forehead. “You want to see my meddie?”

I start to say _no_. That I trust him. Because I do. But that’s absurd. I barely know him. He’s a bartender at a sex club. He might have done half the City. I nod and he turns his head and rubs a thumb over the skin behind his ear to peel back the flap that covers his P-MED implant. The flap lifts to reveal the glowing green disk beneath.

He’s clean, and, like me, infertile.

“I showed you mine,” he says, slyly, almost shyly.

I reach over my head with my unlubricated hand, sweep the hair back from my ear and lift the flap to reveal my disk. He nods and I let the flap and my hair fall back into place. Then I reach out and slip the condom over the head of his second cock. He shivers as I smooth it down with the circle of my thumb and forefinger.

“Kerey,” he says softly, a breath that shapes my name. The way a man speaks when he wants to fuck, very, very badly.

I gaze at him for a moment, all that muscle, all that power held in check. The condom on his second cock contracts, making him look even bigger. It disappears against his skin, so he just looks glistening, wet. His first cock looks dry – _needy_ – in comparison. With a glance at his face, I bend towards his groin.

He catches me before I reach my destination, before I take him in my mouth. “Later,” he says. He guides me onto my back, lifts my heels onto his shoulders. I realize belatedly why the bed’s so high, and then he’s pushing into me, without any foreplay, getting right down to the fucking and I sigh with contentment.

Having him penetrate me isn’t like anything I’ve felt before. It’s always one end and then the other, whether it’s with a finger or the way Jere and Viv liked to do it, with me riding Jere and Viv taking me from behind with a strap-on. This is simultaneous, the complete invasion of my body, and the intensity of the double penetration makes me arch my back and moan before he’s even started moving in me.

He works his way in slowly, gripping my hips with both hands and rocking in and out with small thrusts. Wild, wonderful sensations. Fullness and the mind-bending friction of his two cocks rubbing _everywhere_. The perfect synchronization as he plunges into me. He seems to take an inordinately long time working into me, and I finally glance at this face nervously. Maybe it’s hurting him?

His eyes are open, heavy-lidded, watching me. There’s no pain on his face, only intense concentration and a small smile of pleasure. He’s going slow because he’s enjoying it, because he’s not in any rush, and I lie back with a sigh of relief and surrender to what he’s doing to me.

He grunts, deep and thick, when he finally sinks all the way into me. I writhe, wanting to keep still, not to mess up his rhythm, but it feels so good I can’t stop myself. It’s not like having a finger or a dildo in me. There’s a heat and fullness and naturalness to this that nothing else can match. I moan with the perfectness of it, with finally getting what I want.

He stops moving in me and I look up at him again, worried. Does he want me to be quiet? Marcus didn’t want me to make any noise, not even a whimper. I learned to be absolutely silent for him, and even after we broke up, the training stayed with me. Maybe even a moan is too much for Bull.

He’s still watching me, still smiling slightly. He doesn’t look annoyed. He actually looks really pleased with himself. And with me.

He runs his hands up my legs, back down. I wait for him to reposition me, but he leaves my ankles hooked over his shoulders and simply strokes my legs. The sensation of him touching me, of his big hands moving over my skin while he’s sunk deep in me, is so erotic I want to weep. He touches me everywhere: stroking my belly, my breasts through the sheer fabric of my bra, my shoulders, my throat. He explores the scars on my ribs and chest, traces the knotwork holotattoo circling my navel. And I realize that _this_ is the foreplay.

All while he touches me, he moves slightly inside me. A slow, deep grinding. My body contracts down around him. My internal nerves, desensitized by years of rough fucking, catch fire. He works his way back down my body, rolls my thighs apart with his hands, cupping my knees in the curve of his arms, and strokes my mons with his thumb. The feeling makes my thighs shake. My belly and vagina and ass begin to contract, hot, liquid waves of pleasure. His thumb slips between my outer lips and rubs across the slick, swollen hood of my clitoris.

I come, legs juddering against him, hips lifting off the bed, hands fisting in the tangled bedclothes. Bright sparks explode behind my eyes, inside me. I cry out, bite my lip, shudder into stillness.

Bull’s still moving in me when I open my eyes and look up at him. One side of his mouth lifts. “That wasn’t my name,” he says, his voice heavy with sex. “Maybe we’d better try that again.”

I start to say _no_ , because I’m no good at multiple orgasms. I just get raw. But he moves more firmly in me, stroking in and out, and there’s no rawness. There’s just liquid friction everywhere. He slides almost out and then plunges back in that perfect, synchronized rhythm. His hands shift to my hips and grip me tightly, pulling me to him with each thrust.

The next orgasm begins in my ass, contracting hard around that plunging hot length. It spreads, tightening my vagina and belly. My clitoris catches fire, burns in bright pulses while he pumps me. His head goes back and he makes a straining noise in his throat. His twin cocks swell in me, the friction and fullness becoming unbearable, until I’m crying out his name while I climax. His hard, relentless fucking keeps me going, lifts me higher, above the plateau of sensation I usually reach, pushing me into an orgasm so intense I gray out, bucking and thrashing under him as my muscles spasm uncontrollably and my eyes roll back in my head.

I come to when he climaxes. His head is thrown back, veins standing out in his throat. The muscles in his chest and shoulders jump wildly. His hands contract on my hips in a soft, caressing way that says, more than his expression or the feeling of him going inside me, how much he enjoys this.

He slumps forward, supporting himself above me on his hands. He shakes his head back and forth, his eyes glazed, half-closed. Each breath comes out as a deep, soft groan.

I lie under him, watching him enjoy the aftermath. I hate the after-sex part. The part where I feel sticky and vaguely dirty. I don’t hurt as much as I usually do after kinky sex, real sex, but I still wouldn’t mind him pulling out. My thighs, spread wide around his hips, are beginning to ache.

He finally opens his eyes. He looks down at me and grins, an open, unabashed grin. It makes him look young. And I realize I have no idea how old Bull is. Older than me, maybe already staring down thirty.

“You okay?” he asks.

I nod, but he must see the lie on my face. His grin turns rueful. He reaches down between us and grips the rolled edge of the condom while he slides out of me. His consideration makes something in my chest hurt.

I start to sit up but he waves me back. “I’ll get you a towel,” he says.

Uncertain, I follow him with my eyes as he moves around the weight benches, to the far side of the kitchen cluster, where there’s a commode and frosted shower cubicle set into the wall. His naked ass is just as good to watch as it was when it was in his leather pants, and I realize I didn’t get to squeeze it while he was fucking me. A drop of regret in a sea of satisfaction.

He drops the condom in the commode, flashes, washes himself off and picks up a fresh towel. All while I’m sitting on the bed, feeling the aftershocks still quivering through my ass, wondering how to make a graceful exit.

He returns while I’m discarding lame escape lines and slides the clean towel between my thighs. He stretches out on the bed next to me, crossing his long legs at the ankle. I stay sitting on the edge of the bed, feeling ridiculous, like I’m wearing a diaper, and not knowing how to escape the growing awkwardness of the situation.

He pats the bed next to him. “C’mere, Kerey.” Satiation thickens his voice until it’s as dark and thick as treacle.

I scoot over next to him, ending up near his hip. I’m too embarrassed to look at his face. His groin draws my gaze like a magnet. It’s fascinating. _They’re_ fascinating. Even relaxed. They lie together against his stomach like one massively thick cock. I wonder, fleetingly, if he tucks one down each leg of his pants. _Double-hung_ springs to mind and I have to stifle a giggle.

“Touch ‘em,” he offers softly. “If you want.”

I do. I can’t tear my eyes away, and I’m desperate to know what they feel like. Do they feel the same as a normal dick, or are they different? I reach out and run my fingertips through the curls that cradle them. His pubic hair is silky-soft. I stroke it for a minute, before tentatively touching the thick joint where his two cocks meet his groin. The skin there is so fine, firm with the sense of muscle beneath, but pillow-soft in the way that only real skin is. I can’t stop touching him. I slide my fingertips up over the base of one cock, stroking that fine, soft skin over and over.

Bull reaches out, guiding my hand up onto his stomach. “Gimme a few minutes to recover. Getting hard again so fast hurts.”

I withdraw my hand with a sense of my own idiocy. Of course he can’t get ready again so quickly. I didn’t expect him to. I was just exploring. Fascinated by the novelty of it. Of _them_.

“Kerey,” he says. “Lie down.”

I glance at his face. He’s watching me, eyes glinting in the moonlight. I flush with that acute sense of embarrassment again. “I, uh, I should go.”

He grunts like I’ve punched him in the solar plexus. “Fuck and run, huh? Yeah, I heard that about you.”

“Wha—? What did you hear about me?”

“That you’re off like a shot afterwards. One-way Kerey.”

My face is so hot it must be on fire. “One-way Kerey? What does that mean?”

“You’re always on the way out the door,” he says.

I open my mouth to protest, to say it’s not true. But it is. Marcus used to kick me out of bed without so much as a post-coital kiss and the habit got ingrained. Like silence. Like being ashamed. I’m used to running home, showering, curling up in my bed and lying awake for hours, feeling the dirtiness and soreness and swearing that it won’t happen again.

Until the next time.

“Well, I—” I begin, not knowing where I’m going, but that it is definitely time to leave.

“Kerey.” A deep sigh. “Lie the fuck down.”

The voice of command. The voice of a Master. Rich with the promise of punishment if I don’t obey. My body responds automatically. I lie down awkwardly next to him, not knowing if I should stretch out, huddle, what. He reaches out, puts his arm around me, and draws me against his side.

“You don’t go anywhere until I say you can go,” he says. He sounds weary. “Got that?”

I nod fervently.

“Relax,” he says, his voice dropping, softening, coaxing instead of commanding.

I can’t obey him as easily when he doesn’t order me. But, slowly, I relax. I’m not used to being held afterwards. None of my Masters have, and I haven’t stuck around to give any of my one-nighters the opportunity. At first it’s sweat-sticky and awkward and I wish that I was home in my own bed. But as my skin cools, the warmth of his body begins to feel nice. I find a position that’s not so uncomfortable, with one arm folded between us and the other across his huge chest. Slowly, I cuddle a little closer, put my head on his shoulder, my leg over his. With the towel wrapped around me, it’s not disgusting to press against him. The pressure of his thigh against my mons feels good. He puts his hand over mine and strokes the back of my hand. Languid circles of his fingertips.

We lie in silence, which doesn’t seem to bother him, and I get used to in slow degrees. His stroking of my hand peters out. His breath comes in small puffs, and when I look up into his face, see the slackness there, I realize he’s fallen asleep.

I think about moving. Trying to slip out of the bed and escape while he’s asleep. But I’m sure any movement will wake him. And lying here with him isn’t so bad. Not nearly as bad as lying in my own bed, hurting and regretful. Except that I’m not really hurting, not the way I usually do after I feed my kink. I tense my inner muscles, testing. No pain. Even my ass feels okay. Half the time I’m torn up after anal sex. I guess the lubricated condom performed as advertised.

And Bull was gentler than I had any right to expect. I hadn’t heard anything about him. Not like what he’d heard about me. One-way Kerey. That stings. Goddamn Marcus. But I expected that Bull would be rough. He’s always come across as ultra-butch. Vivienne was ultra-butch, and she liked to hurt. Sex wasn’t sex for Viv unless I bled.

Bull stirs, stretches, shifts until he’s on his side, facing me. “Mmm, Kerey.”

I like the way he says my name. Totally different from the way Cat-woman said it. Bull’s deep voice turns me on anyway, but hearing him say my name, even if it is only my club name, makes warm bubbles rise through my belly.

“Hi,” I say shyly. And then, inanely, “I’m still here.”

He chuckles. “I can see that.”

He gathers me closer until he’s tucked me against his chest. His chin presses gently on the top of my head. One heavy thigh slides across mine and his twin cocks rub against my belly. He’s still soft, but even soft, he feels huge. So wide. It makes me wonder.

“Have you ever, uh, tried both at once?”

“Hmm?”

“Um, have you ever put both in the same place at once?”

He chuckles. “What’re you tryin’ to say, Kerey?”

I wish I hadn’t said anything. Why do I always let my curiosity make a fool of me?

“If you’re askin’ if anyone’s ever let me put both of _mine_ in _theirs_ at once, th’ answers’s no. I don’t think most women could take it.”

I nod against his chest. He’s probably right.

“Most women ain’t willin’ to try what we just did, either. I usually end up shootin’ air with one of ‘em.” He grunts, stretches. “You want to give it a shot, though, we could try to work up to it.”

A shiver of excitement runs through me. I do. I want to try it. I want to try it every way we can think of. But that means staying, working up to it like he says, and that’s a bad idea. I can’t be a pet again, and I don’t know any other way to be with a Master.

“Let’s take this off,” he says. His fingers drift up my back, flick open the back catch of my bra. “See if we can work on it some.”

He skims the strap down my arm, lets me rise up onto my elbow to shrug the bra off and toss it onto the floor with my jeans and boots. When I lie back down, he shifts so my breasts are level with his face. He strokes me, cupping my breast, squeezing gently. My nipple goes rock-hard against his palm. He rubs it between his thumb and index finger. His breath, cool on my heated skin, feathers over me. Then his tongue licks out to lap my nipple as he squeezes it between his fingers.

I writhe. What he’s doing feels better than all the nipple clamps in the world.

He grazes my nipple with his teeth and I grab onto his head. I can’t help it. I know I’m supposed to stay still, submit, let him do whatever he wants to me. But teeth near my nipples are scary, since Viv. Genuinely scary.

He reaches up and loosens my hold. I expect him to wrench my hands off his head and punish me, and I shiver. Instead, he takes my hand and smoothes it down over his scalp. “Think of it like a big dick,” he murmurs. Then he takes my nipple into his mouth and begins to suck.

I nearly go off the bed. Only his arm around me, his hand on my breast, his heavy thigh over mine, keep me in place. My breasts are still sensitive from my earlier orgasm, and each touch feels magnified, so intense I can’t stand it. And he knows how to suck. God, does he know how to suck. He starts slow, gentle suction, laving my nipple with his tongue as it stretches in his mouth. I stroke his head in wonder, barely feeling the smooth hardness of it under my fingers, I’m so focused on what he’s doing to my breast. He lets up just a little, so my nipple contracts and he can flick the point of his tongue against the tip. Then he’s sucking again, harder, pulling my nipple deep into his mouth and bright sparks are shooting down into my belly and groin and I’m wondering if I can come just from him sucking my breast.

He reaches down and pushes the towel through my legs. His hand swirls over my hip for a moment before he draws my leg over his. Under my thigh, his hips rock forward. Hot, fleshy pressure against my clitoris and the wet opening of my vagina. His hips circle and he grinds the tips of both cocks against me. I shudder with pleasure.

His hand returns to my hip, to coax small movements out of me, to rock me to his rhythm. His long fingers splay across my hip. His thumb rubs over a patch of roughened skin.

He traces the letters. C-U-N-T.

I freeze.

“What’s wrong, Kerey?” he asks, lifting his head from my breast. The touch of cool air on my breast is as sharp and painful as the cut of a whip. I want to tug him back down to me, but I’m frozen by the motion of his thumb over my brand.

“What,” he says. “You think I’d have a problem with this? I saw it earlier.”

I manage to move my mouth, although the rest of me feels flash-frozen. “I, uh, do you?”

He slides up onto one elbow, looks down at me with hooded eyes. “Have a problem with you brandin’ yourself? No. ‘Long as you ain’t asking me join in. That kinda pain’s not my thing.”

 _I didn’t brand myself_. My brain begins to shut down at the memory. I shake my head, bite my lip, try to focus on something else, try _not_ to remember. He’s still touching me with both of those amazing cocks, pressing against me and all I want to think about is him fucking me again but instead my head fills with screaming and the smell of my own skin burning and the stunning, unbelievable pain of it and the sound of Viv howling like a demented cat as Jere screws her, so excited by what she’d just done to me that they didn’t even need me between them, and my own helpless, useless sobbing while the pain grinds into me, stamps its imprint indelibly on my soul.

“Kerey.” His deep voice. Not Viv’s alto purr or Jere’s nasal tones. I’m here, in bed with Bull, and he’s giving me exactly what I’ve wanted for so long and Viv and Jere are out of my life forever and if I could just fucking focus on the _now_  . . . “Kerey, you okay?”

I try to speak, to reassure him. This isn’t what he wants to hear when he’s about to fuck me. But I can’t think, can’t speak. Finally, I manage a nod.

He snorts. “Yeah, right. Want to tell me about it?” He withdraws and reaches across my hip for the towel.

I finally find my voice again. “No,” I choke. I don’t want him to stop. I don’t want to ruin the moment with thoughts of my past idiocy. I want him to fuck me into forgetting. “Can’t we just keep going? I was really—”

“Enjoyin’ that? Me, too. But we got all night. I got a feelin’ this won’t wait.”

“Yes, it will,” I cry. Why do I have to ruin everything? Why won’t my motherfucking past stay in the past? “It’s not important.”

He traces the brand with two fingers. I flinch. I can’t help it. His touch is light, doesn’t hurt. The brand’s healed; it’s been a year. But I still can’t stand it. I don’t want him to touch it. I don’t touch it myself. If there was any way I could afford to have it regenned, I would. I’ve even thought about taking a knife and cutting the scar off, but I’m too afraid.

“You jump a mile every time I touch it,” he says softly. “And that ain’t important?”

“Please, Bull, I don’t want to think about it—”

He shakes his head slowly, sinks down on the bed until he’s pillowing his head on his bent arm. Curves within curves of dark gold skin. “You can tell me ‘cause you want to and ‘cause I asked, or you can tell me ‘cause I’m _tellin’_ you to.” A hint of menace, of dominance. “Either way, you’re gonna tell me. We gotta get beyond this.”

Beyond it? What’s there to get beyond? It’s there. It always will be there. It will never go away. It’s permanent, a sign on my skin of the stain on my soul. “There’s nothing to tell.”

“No? How ‘bout you tell me why you got _cunt_ burned into your hip in fancy letters. Let’s start there.”

“Carolingian,” I say flatly. The script monks used to write in hundreds of years ago. I looked it up, afterwards. Just the way Viv must have done when she decided to brand me. Discovering that – that she’d planned it, had the branding iron custom-made in that fancy gothic script, all without me so much as suspecting what she was up to – hurt worse than the brand itself. “Viv tied me up and stuck a branding iron in my hip. Because I couldn’t say the things she wanted to hear. So she decided to teach me a lesson. That’s why. Good enough?”

I begin to roll over, push myself up off the bed, feeling sick. I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t care how good the sex is. I want to go home. Run away. One-way Kerey. I don’t care. I can’t face this.

“Lie the fuck down,” he growls.

I freeze, half-way up off the bed.

“Did I tell you you could go?” Real menace this time. His eyes glitter beneath those heavy lids.

I shake my head, the smallest movement I can make.

“Then lie the fuck down.” He watches me obey. “No wonder she branded you. You obey for shit.”

I gape at him – how can he be so cruel? – and the tears start. Real tears, burning in my eyes and dripping down my nose. I grab two handfuls of sheet and bury my face in it, so embarrassed and humiliated I want to scream.

He gathers me to him, hard arms going around me, chest and belly firm against my softness. I struggle for a second. _I want to go_. Then my body remembers what my overwrought mind has blanked out. Stillness. Submission.

“Yeah, that’s it,” he says, soft and sweet as chocolate, his breath warm in my hair. “Cry it out, baby.”

I sob, hiccup, confused.

He cups the back of my head in his hand, tilts my face up so he can kiss me, gentle brushes of his mouth and tongue. “You tell anyone but the judge?”

“Wha-what?” I stammer, too shocked to even lick away my tears, kiss him back. How does he know I pressed charges?

“I heard you got a keep-away order. It’s registered here. At all their regular haunts. I read it. Grievous bodily harm, that’s what it said. I figured it was those marks on your back ‘til you told me about this. Never thought anyone would brand someone against their will. That’s fuckin’ sick.”

Something collapses inside me. A pyramid I’ve built to keep out the pain. A wall against the horror of having my Mistress rape my trust. It falls silently, with the force of an earthquake, and leaves me lost, crying brokenly against Bull’s chest, not knowing where to go, what to do.

Bull holds me while I cry. He touches me, gentle, soothing touches, stroking my back. He whispers to me, in his deep, soft baritone. Things I can’t hear over my own ragged breathing. It doesn’t matter. His touch, his voice, the warmth of his body. So different from my cold bed, the only place I’ve been able to express this. His comfort seeps in past the pain, until I lie quiet in his arms. My breathing finally slows enough that I can hear what he’s saying.

“ . . . went places I’d heard you’d been. But I couldn’t find you. All anyone knew is that things had gone bad between you and your doms and you’d disappeared. I didn’t know where to look for you. Jere didn’t even know. I beat the shit outta him one night when he showed up here, tryin’ to find out. Guess you never took them home with you—”

“No,” I sniffle, wipe my eyes. “I never take anyone home with me.”

He makes a small, surprised noise in his throat. “I didn’t think you were listenin’.”

“I wasn’t,” I admit. “Until just then.”

He adjusts me in his arms. “Where’d you go? All that time . . .” He trails off.

“I hid.” I turn my face a little, out of the pillow of his chest, so I can breathe better. I love being smothered by him, drowned in all that golden skin, but it’s good to taste fresh air. “My apartment, mostly.”

“Why didn’t you come back here? Not everyone’s like them. You know that.”

I shake my head. “I knew that Viv branded me. Adie dumped me when I told her I loved her. Marcus, Jesus, I’m still not sure what happened with him.” He was addicted to poppers when I met him, but got worse and worse, using them constantly, becoming increasingly paranoid, insanely jealous, accusing me of fucking his ‘enemies’ whenever I wasn’t with him. “Anyway, it ended badly. Every time.”

Bull circles his fingers in the small of my back, slowly, meditatively. “Doesn’t have to be like that.”

“No?” I ask. “Maybe not. But it always is.”

Which is why I’ve stuck to one-nighters ever since.

He hugs me to him, nuzzles the top of my head. “How you doin’ now? You okay?”

“Better.” I nod. He’s been patient; more patient than I can remember anyone being. “We can get back to it if you want.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he says, low and soft. “We don’t have to do anythin’ else tonight.”

I open my mouth to protest. My body’s still aching from our earlier foreplay. But his words send a sweet thrill through me. Would he really just hold me the rest of the night? “Do you mean that?”

He yawns, shrugs. “Wouldn’t a said it if I didn’t.”

“Are you sure?” I have to go back to work on Monday. When I’m back in my cubicle on Monday, back in my cold bed on Monday night, will I regret wasting the hours between then and now sleeping?

“Yeah. Here, shift.” He rolls me over, spoons against my back, draping a heavy arm around my waist. I sink into the heat of him. It’s so nice to have the warm bulk of him against my back. My eyelids droop, too heavy to hold open. I grope for and find his hand. He threads his fingers through mine. The last thing I feel before I fall asleep is his breathing: soft, deep puffs, in my hair.

*

A metallic clang wakes me. I come to with a shudder. Sit up, shaking.

I’m not in my bed. Nothing’s where it should be. I’m not where I should be.

I look around wildly.

Bull’s warm brown eyes meet mine. “Sorry,” he says. He eases out from under a barbell and sits up, straddling the weight bench. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”

“What time is it?” I ask, trying to get my bearings.

“Little before eleven.”

I rub my hands over my face, grind my fingers into my gritty eyes. I feel muzzy, disoriented, like I’ve had too much to drink, except that I just had the one beer. “What day is it?”

Bull chuckles. He comes to sit on the edge of the bed. He’s naked and my eyes are drawn to his groin as if they were magnetic. Even soft they’re fascinating; I could stare at them forever. “Sunday,” he says.

Sunday. Tension drains out of my shoulders. I still have a day before I have to go back to work. Back to reality.

His hand rubs up and down my thigh, from knee to hip and back, rumpling the sheet. “How you feelin’? You hungry?”

I glance at his face through my fingers. Hungry? As in, a euphemism for sex? My breathing quickens and a second heartbeat begins to thump in my belly. “Yes, definitely.”

“Better get up then. I got nothin’ here but beer. There’s a good place down the street for breakfast. Great coffee.”

Oh, that kind of hungry. I feel a flutter of disappointment as I slide out of his bed. Retrieving my scattered clothes, I dress quickly, not looking at Bull, oddly shy despite having been naked with him for hours. Somehow it’s different the morning after.

When I glance at the stacked plastic crates, looking for my vest, I find Bull, dressed, holding out a black t-shirt to me.

“Clubwear’s a little much for the diner on the corner,” he says. The edges of his mouth tilt wryly.

I return his grin. My low-cut vest _is_ a little much for breakfast. As are my stiletto boots, but there’s nothing I can do about them. I shrug on his shirt, which, predictably, swims on me. But it feels good in that soft, worn way only men’s clothes feel, and it smells of him.

Bull takes my hand and leads me to the elevator. As we step inside and he pulls the grate down, I glance longingly at the rumpled bed. I’m hungry, but I wouldn’t have minded postponing breakfast for a while.

Downstairs, we walk together through the dark club. It has a ghostly feel to it. The shades of good times past. Our footsteps echo. The smell of stale beer pervades.

“I need my POS suit from the cloakroom,” I say as we near the outer door.

“What for?” He presses his thumb against a magnelock. The outer door snicks open; a shaft of sunlight pierces the club’s interior gloom. “It’s already rained. Nothing else’s forecast until tonight.”

“You trust a weather forecast?” I shake my head at him, incredulous. “I don’t want to get caught out. And what about UV exposure? Aren’t you worried about that?”

Bull laughs, a rich sound that echoes in the club’s vestibule. “Live a little, Kerey,” he says, beginning to step outside.

But I’m too afraid of the poisoned environment. I plead until he unlocks the cloakroom. Suitably protected, I walk beside him through the sleepy Sunday-morning streets. He takes my gloved hand, swings it as we walk along. Looking at him – at the morning sun shining on his bare skin while I smother in the stuffy suit – I feel faintly ridiculous.

As soon as we reach the diner, a real dining car parked permanently on a City side-street and rusting into its own nostalgia, I strip off the suit. Bull takes it from me and hangs it on a hook next to a booth by the window. At the formica counter, the waitress, her piercings, holotats and inventively spiked shock of black hair an eye-jolting contrast to her neat, pin-striped uniform, takes our order. We take the coffees she passes us and retreat to the booth.

Bull stretches out in his seat with a creak of vinyl. The black of his t-shirt outlines his muscular bulk against the patterned red of the seat. His shoulders are so wide they take up the entire booth. God, he looks good. Good enough to eat. I still wish I was having him for breakfast.

“So,” he says slowly.

I wait for him to continue. When he doesn’t, I quirk an eyebrow. “So?”

He takes a sip of coffee, grimaces with pleasure. “Ah, that’s good. So what now?”

I shrug, take a taste of my own coffee. He’s right. It’s rich and mellow but with a faint bite. I’ve lightened mine with cream until it’s a shade darker than his skin. Delicious. “What do you mean?”

“When’re you takin’ off?”

I hunch into myself. He wants me to leave. I should have expected it. But his comment last night – _one-way Kerey_ – made me think . . .

“Whenever you want me to. I’m sure you’ve got things to do—”

He watches me, eyes darker than his black coffee. “Let’s say I _don’t_ want you to. What then?”

Confused, I frown at him over my coffee cup. “I’m not sure what you mean. I, uh, I have to go to work tomorrow.”

“Work, huh?” He looks out the window at the hazy, yellow sky. “What kinda work you do?”

“I work in finance.” I take another sip of coffee, needing the warmth in my stomach. “Compliance.”

“Thrillin’,” he grunts. “You like it?”

“I need it,” I say, before I have time to think. And then I close my eyes, realizing it’s possibly the stupidest, most hurtful thing I’ve ever said.

“You need it?” He frowns, eyes darkening to jet. “Whaddo you mean you _need_ it?”

I bite my lips, trying to think of a way out. A way to take back what I’ve said. I try to backpedal. “I make good money, you know.”

Bull shakes his head, and the hazy daylight coalesces to two bright points of anger in his eyes. “That ain’t it. You _need_ it. To pass. To pretend you’re straight. That you’re not a freak.”

I can’t meet those anger-bright eyes. He’s right. He’s exactly right. I stare into my half-empty cup.

“Doesn’t work, does it, Kerey?” he asks, a deadly, deceptive softness to his tone. “That straight job and your straight friends and everythin’ else you cling to, they can’t straighten out your kink. You still come back to the clubs. You still come lookin’ for it. And you always will.”

I cringe. He’s touched the rawest of my raw nerves. The fear that this isn’t just a passing quirk. Some unresolved adolescent phase that, if I get fucked just the right way often enough, I’ll grow out of. The fear that I’ll always live this double life, always need the kind of kinky sex that Barzarre and Bull and my previous Masters have given me. That I’ll never feel real, never feel _whole_.

“No wonder you’re always on the way out th’ door,” Bull rumbles, almost meditatively. But I can hear the pure fury held in check beneath that calm tone. “You gotta get back to that straight life. Before you get sucked down in this one. Bet you shower when you get home. You feel dirty afterwards, don’tcha?”

I pinch my burning eyes between my thumb and forefinger. I’m not going to cry in front of him. I’m not. No matter how much the things he says hurt. No matter how right he is. “How do you know?” I snap defensively. “You don’t know anything.”

“Why?” The word creaks with suppressed anger. “’Cause I was born a freak? You think that means I don’t know anythin’?”

I shake my head. How do I put the brakes on this hideous conversation? “No, I don’t—”

“You think ‘cause I can’t hide what I am, I don’t know?” he continues. “You ever think that maybe I don’t even try?”

I’m lost. I don’t know what to say. “Bull—”

“I ain’t a dirty secret, Kerey. I ain’t somethin’ you take out to play with on weekends.”

“No,” I protest. “It’s not like that.”

“The fuck it’s not.”

We’re interrupted by the arrival of our food. The waitress puts the plates on our table, stiff-armed, holding herself away from us, clearly aware she’s interrupted an argument. Bull stares out the window. I stare at my coffee. The food sits between us, untouched, even after she leaves.

I can feel a wall of silence building. I scramble through ways to break it. Nothing works, even in my head.

Bull begins to eat, methodically, with his head down, not looking at me. Slowly, I follow his example. We eat in silence. My smoked soyu on a homemade bagel is wonderful. The bagel’s crunchy on the outside, chewy in the middle. Perfect. But I can’t enjoy it. Each bite sinks in my stomach like a lead weight.

The silence becomes so thick, so oppressive, so profound I can hear the antique mechanical clock on the wall behind the counter ticking out the seconds. The ticking echoes in my skull until I have to say something, anything, to silence it. “Bull,” I say, just above a whisper. “I’m sorry. That was a shitty thing to say, and I—”

He looks up. His eyes are as cold and dead as stone. “Don’t apologize. It was the truth. Maybe the first true thing you’ve said.”

“No,” I shake my head vehemently. I’ve told him nothing but the truth. Hard and painful as each truth has been. “That’s not right.”

He shrugs. “Whatever. I know where I stand.”

My stomach clenches around the food I’ve eaten. Each bite feels like a separate lead weight rolling around in my belly. “Wha—where’s that?”

He sits back, pushing away his half-empty plate. His eyes return to the window. “Nowhere. I got nothing to do with th’ straight world. It’s got nothin’ to offer me.”

“Wha-well,” I stammer, trying to understand what he’s saying. I can’t. “What does that mean?”

“Means I shoulda gone with my gut.” He rolls his shoulders like they ache. “Moment I saw you’d come back, my gut said, ‘stay the fuck away. Whatever she’s lookin’ for, you’re not th’ one to give it to her.’ I shoulda listened.”

“No. What I said about coming back for you – that was the truth, too.”

He looks straight at me, lancing me with those shark-dead eyes. “Not enough, Kerey.”

“What?”

“Not enough. You didn’t need me enough to pick me, or to come back after that bitch fucked you over—”

“I only just realized—!” I protest.

He continues over me. “And you don’t need me enough to make it real – to make _this_ real. You’re gonna run back to your straight life and your straight job and fuck me until the next time you need to get off—”

“No!”

“What?” His cold eyes narrow. “You stayin’?”

I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. What about the rest of my life? Isn’t there more to me than this?

“I have to go to work tomorrow,” I say in a tiny voice.

“Yeah,” he says slowly. “Me, too. Difference is, I don’t gotta pretend I’m something I’m not while I’m there.”

He wipes his mouth with a napkin. Stands.

“Bye, Kerey.”

“No, Bull—”

He shakes his head. “Take care of yourself. I don’t want to see any more keep-away orders about you. One was bad enough.”

“Bull, please—” The tears finally start and I shield my face with my hand so the waitress doesn’t see me crying.

He sighs heavily. “Do somethin’ for me. Stay away from Barzarre for awhile. Too hard on both of us, don’tcha think?”

“God, Bull—” My voice breaks and I can’t continue because I’ll be sobbing out loud.

His hand touches my bent head for a moment, and then he’s moving away from me with a creak of his leather boots. A bell jingles. I look up at the noise. His head, shining in the sun, passes by the window.

And then he’s gone.

*

I wait in the line, nervously working my keys in my hand until my palm is imprinted with their shape. Until, despite the fact that they’ve gone dead and dark with the termination of my lease, they’re so warm they feel like skin. His skin. My palms twitch with the remembered feel.

Finally, I reach Pink. His green eyeglow flicks over me.

“Sorry, not on the list.”

I expected this. Hearing it is still a punch in the gut.

Behind me, the expectant, the hopeful, begin to mutter. I’m holding up the line. I catch my breath and hold out the keys to Pink.

“Could you give these to Bull? Tell him they’re from Kerey.”

“From Kerey,” Pink repeats, but there’s no inflection. No recognition. Bull’s erased my name and image from Pink’s memory and it’s like I never was.

Maybe I wasn’t.

“Thanks,” I say, pull my glove back on, and move out of the line, back onto the street. Into the steady drip of the rain that sizzles faintly on the permacrete sidewalk. Nature chipping away at the City. Maybe if I come back tomorrow, and the next night, and the next, I can chip away at Bull’s resolve the same way. The thought has a rank edge to it, and I know I won’t do it. Fuck my stupid pride.

I adjust the hood of my suit against the drizzle and move off down the street. My boots splash through puddles with a hollow sound. I’m not sure where I’m going. Pink has the keys to the flat I can no longer call home. I have to give the autolet service a forwarding address so they can send on my things. Where? I have no idea. I hope the ‘bot gives the keys to Bull. Nothing I can do if it doesn’t. Maybe I’ll come back tomorrow, see if I can leave a message for him. I know I won’t. Where the fuck am I going? Anywhere clean and cheap will do for tonight. Tomorrow I’ll try to figure out what’s next.

“ _Kerey_.”

Deep. Baritone.

I whirl around.

He’s pushing his way through the crowd, stepping out into the rain. He’s not even wearing his jacket. Just a black t-shirt.

I start back towards him, splashing through puddles.

“Get inside!” I shout. “Are you crazy?”

“Yeah,” he growls. Wipes his wet head with a thunderous frown. “Fuck, that stings.”

“Bull—” I begin, slowing as I reach him.

“What’re these?” He holds up my keys.

“Keys—”

He wipes his head again and in the sodium glare of the streetlights, his scalp reddens. “Yeah, I can see that,” he snaps. “To what?”

“Bull, shouldn’t you get inside—?”

“Just answer the question!” he roars.

I take a step back, nervous at this breach in his iron control. “My apartment.”

“What, you invitin’ me uptown?” His lip curls and he shakes his head, spraying me with acrid drops.

“No, they’re dead. See? I quit. No job. No apartment. I brought them down to show you that I did it.”

Bull stares at me, blinking. The rain must be stinging his eyes like a thousand hornets. Just looking at him makes my eyes water in sympathy. “You quit,” he says slowly.

“Yes. Now would you go back inside?”

“Yeah.” He wraps an arm around my shoulders and steers me through the crowd to the door of the club. Pink rolls back to admit us without comment. When I start to strip off my POS suit, Bull shakes his head and nods toward the bar. I let him lead me there, curiously.

At the far end of the bar, near the amp wall, he flips up the hinged bartop and slides through into the bar-back. He towels himself off with a rag before holding his hands out to me. “Gimme your clothes,” he mouths over the music. “All of ‘em.”

“What?” I shout over the pounding noise.

In answer, he reaches back behind his head and pulls off his t-shirt. The rain has already eaten small holes in the shoulder seams. I expect him to discard the ruined shirt. Maybe he has another stashed under the bar.

Instead he throws the shirt at me. I catch it reflexively. He holds out one hand, wags his fingers in an unmistakable gesture. “Gimme your clothes,” he repeats.

I set his shirt on the bar-top and hold his eyes while I strip off the POS suit and what’s underneath it: the faceless, formless business suit I wore to work this morning. To hand in my resignation after four sleepless, hopeless nights without Bull.

Off come the Company jacket and shirt and carefully knee-length skirt. Ignoring the wolf-whistles from the clubbers on the other side of the bar, I toss them to him one-by-one until I’m standing in my underwear. Conservative black bra and panties, much less enticing than what I was wearing the last time I stripped in front of him.

From the look in his eyes, Bull doesn’t notice the difference. His eyes darken, glow wicked and lustful in the club’s strobes. My heart leaps. I wasn’t sure he’d ever look at me that way again.

“I gotta work,” he says in that carrying growl. “Dance for me until closing.”

I grin. Three hours until closing. Three hours of him watching me. Three hours of feeling his eyes on me like a physical caress. Three hours of foreplay.

I slip his shirt over my head, shake it down below my hips. When I hug it to me, his good, male smell rises from the still-warm cloth. The scent stirs hot sparks in my belly.

Bull watches me, eyes growing darker, more intent. I smile teasingly and begin to move off towards the dance floor.

His deep voice calls me back.

“What d’you want me to do with these?” He holds up my keys.

“Whatever you want.” I shrug. “I don’t need them anymore.”

“Good.” He drops them into the flash-can below the bar; they incinerate in a brief green burst. Then he fishes in the pocket of his leather pants, pulls out a chain and tosses it to me. “You’ll need these.”

I catch it, open my palm to look at it. A set of magnedisks clipped to a loop of long, thin chain. The kind of chain a pet would wear. Did he get this for me?

“What’s this?” I shout, drawing a few steps back towards the bar so I can hear his answer.

“Keys to my place,” he answers as he pops the tops on several bottles and begins to hand out the next round of drinks. His eyes remain on me.

Holding his eyes, I loop the chain around my neck and edge away from the bar, onto the dance floor. In his shirt, with his keys bouncing to the beat against my heart, I dance just for him.

His eyes never leave me.


End file.
